Oracle Editions

There are 4 different versions for Oracle database usage purpose, features and license prices.

These versions and details are as follows.

Enterprise Edition: It is the most expensive version of Oracle database, which includes all components and options. This version is generally preferred by organizations that need business critical, high performance and extra security.

Standart Edition: In organizations that do not need to use Enterprise edition, this version is usually used. This edition is not as expensive as an enterprise edition, as there are no features and components in the Enterprise edition.

Personal Edition: Personal edition is a single-user version for development purposes.

Express Edition: It is an entry-level version of Oracle Database that is easy to download, install and manage quickly, and is free to develop, deploy, and use. Data size and RAM usage limitation is not recommended because it is not recommended for commercial use because this version is free.

Detail features and option accoring to Oracle editions are as follows.

Feature/Option

SE1

SE

EE

Notes

High Availability

Oracle Fail Safe

Y

Y

Y

Windows only

Oracle Data Guard—Redo Apply

N

N

Y

Oracle Data Guard—SQL Apply

N

N

Y

Oracle Data Guard—Snapshot Standby

N

N

Y

Oracle Active Data Guard

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

Rolling Upgrades—Patch Set, Database, and Operating System

N

N

Y

Online index rebuild

N

N

Y

Online index-organized table organization

N

N

Y

ALTER TABLE … MOVE ONLINE operations

Online table redefinition

N

N

Y

Using the DBMS_REDEFINITION package

Duplexed backup sets

N

N

Y

Block change tracking for fast incremental backup

N

N

Y

Unused block compression in backups

N

N

Y

Block-level media recovery

N

N

Y

Lost Write Protection

N

N

Y

Parallel backup and recovery

N

N

Y

Tablespace point-in-time recovery

N

N

Y

Trial recovery

N

N

Y

Fast-start fault recovery

N

N

Y

Flashback Table

N

N

Y

Flashback Database

N

N

Y

Flashback Transaction

N

N

Y

Flashback Transaction Query

N

N

Y

Flashback Data Archive (Total Recall)

N

N

Y

Requires Oracle Advanced Compression option

Scalability

Oracle Real Application Clusters

N

Y

Y

Extra cost with EE, included with SE

Automatic Workload Management

N

Y

Y

Requires Oracle Real Application Clusters

Performance

Client Side Query Cache

N

N

Y

Query Results Cache

N

N

Y

PL/SQL Function Result Cache

N

N

Y

In-Memory Database Cache

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

SQL Plan Management

N

N

Y

Support for Oracle Exadata Storage Server

N

N

Y

Support for Oracle Exadata Storage Server Software

N

N

Y

Security

Oracle Advanced Security

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

Oracle Label Security

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

Virtual Private Database

N

N

Y

Fine-grained auditing

N

N

Y

Oracle Database Vault

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

Development Platform

SQLJ

Y

Y

Y

Requires Oracle Programmer

Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET

Y

Y

Y

Windows only

Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator support

Y

Y

Y

Windows only

Active Directory integration

Y

Y

Y

Windows only

Native .NET Data Provider—ODP.NET

Y

Y

Y

Windows only

.NET Stored Procedures

Y

Y

Y

Windows only

Manageability

Oracle Change Management Pack

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

Oracle Configuration Management Pack

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

Oracle Diagnostic Pack

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

Oracle Tuning Pack

N

N

Y

Extra cost option, also requires the Diagnostic Pack

Oracle Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

Database Resource Manager

N

N

Y

Oracle Real Application Testing

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

VLDB, Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence

Oracle Partitioning

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

Oracle OLAP

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

Oracle Data Mining

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

Oracle Advanced Compression

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

Direct-Load Table Compression

N

N

Y

Bitmapped index, bitmapped join index, and bitmap plan conversions

N

N

Y

Parallel query/DML

N

N

Y

Parallel statistics gathering

N

N

Y

Parallel index build/scans

N

N

Y

Parallel Data Pump Export/Import

N

N

Y

Transportable tablespaces, including cross-platform

N

N

Y

Import of transportable tablespaces supported into SE, SE1, and EE

Summary management—Materialized View Query Rewrite

N

N

Y

Asynchronous Change Data Capture

N

N

Y

Integration

Basic Replication

Y

Y

Y

SE1/SE: read-only, updateable materialized view

Advanced Replication

N

N

Y

Multi-master replication

Oracle Streams

Y

Y

Y

SE1/SE: no capture from redo

Database Gateways

Y

Y

Y

Separate product license

Networking

Oracle Connection Manager

N

N

Y

Infiniband Support

N

N

Y

Content Management

Oracle Spatial and Graph

N

N

Y

Extra cost option

Semantic Technologies (RDF/OWL)

N

N

Y

Requires the Oracle Spatial and Graph option and the Oracle Partitioning option

When using Oracle Database, very much attention should be paid to licensing not required versions and features should not be used. Although the business critics and situations of each institution are different, it can be said in general. If you don’t need Disaster Recovery, you don’t need to use Enterprise edition only if High availability is important if you don’t use features like Compression, parallelism and Encryption. Because many of the remaining features are already in the Standard edition, but the Real Application Cluster feature is in the Standard edition.

There are many examples and situations like this. Before installing Oracle Database, all needs and requirements should be determined and used accordingly. You should select which database components you will use after installation in the following Installation step.

One of the most misunderstood issues is the inclusion of all features and options in the Enterprise edition. That is to say, as I mentioned in the tables above of an enterprise with only Enterprise edition license, features such as Partitioning and Compression are not included in this license. Organizations using Enterprise edition have an Enterprise license for all features listed in the table above as Extra license costs, but are required to pay extra fees.